A specimen processing device including a plurality of measurement units, and a conveyance unit for conveying the specimen to the plurality of measurement units is conventionally known.
For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,209,903 discloses a total blood examination device including two blood analyzers, one smear producing device, and a conveyance device for conveying the specimen to such devices. The total blood examination device includes a barcode reader in each of the analyzer and the smear producing device, where whether or not the processing of specimen, by the device corresponding to the barcode reader that has performed reading, is necessary is determined according to the result of reading the barcode attached to the specimen container.
A specimen processing system configured to include a plurality of analyzing units, the system conveying the specimen rack to one of the analyzing units, and analyzing the specimen of each test tube held by the conveyed specimen rack with the analyzing unit at the conveyance destination is known. For instance, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 11-316238 discloses an automatic analyzer including a plurality of analyzing units and a main conveyance line for conveying the specimen to the plurality of analyzing units. The automatic analyzer includes a barcode reader near the entrance of the main conveyance line, so that rack identification information and specimen ID are recognized by the barcode reader. The types of analyzing items that can be analyze processed by each analyzing unit are registered in a storage portion of a control unit arranged in the automatic analyzer, where with which one of the analyzing units to analyze process the specimen on the specimen rack is determined by the control unit with the recognition of the specimen ID. The automatic analyzer conveys the specimen rack to one analyzing unit with analyzing request, and the relevant analyzing unit analyzes the specimen of each test tube held at the specimen rack.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2000-88860 discloses a specimen conveyance system in which a plurality of analyzers is connected from the upstream side to the downstream side with respect to the conveyance line for conveying the rack holding a plurality of specimens. In the specimen conveyance system disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2000-88860, a plurality of determination positions are set as positions immediately before each analyzer on the conveyance line, and a label reader is arranged at each determination position. The label reader can optically read the barcode label, that is, the rack label attached to the rack. A rack receiving portion is connected to the end on the upstream side of the conveyance line, the label reader is arranged at the exit side of the rack receiving portion, and the rack label and the label of each specimen are read by the label reader. The information read by the label reader arranged at the exit side of the rack receiving portion is sent to a scheduler, and the scheduler then acquires a list of analyzing items based on the rack ID and the specimen ID read by the label reader. The rack label is read by the label reader at each determination position, and the read information is sent to the scheduler. The scheduler determines to which analyzer to input the rack for every rack at each determination position in view of parameters such as the set analyzing item, the number of storage racks of the rack storage area in which the rack to be applied with the analyzer is stored, the total number of tests, the operation state, the availability state, and the processing ability for every analyzer, and performs the conveyance control of the rack so as to equalize the load in each analyzer.
However, in the total blood examination device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,209,903, the barcode reader needs to be arranged for each of the analyzer and the smear producing device, and hence the configuration is complicated.
In the automatic analyzer disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 11-316238, the specimen of each test tube held by one specimen rack is analyzed by one analyzing unit, and hence the specimen cannot be efficiently processed.
In the specimen conveyance system disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2000-88860, a plurality of label readers needs to be arranged at the positions immediately before each analyzer to convey the rack to each analyzer, and hence the configuration is complicated. Furthermore, with respect to the same rack, the rack label needs to be read by the label reader arranged at each determination position after reading the rack ID and the specimen ID by the label reader arranged at the exit side of the rack receiving portion, and hence the number of reading by the label reader is great and the operation is wasteful.